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General Information

On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Beast Mastery
Hunters in World of Warcraft Legion 7.3. We detail what each of
the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other pages of our Beast Mastery Hunter guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author

This guide has been written by Azortharion, the main theorycrafter of the spec. He is also an
accomplished player who raids in Solaris. You can also watch his stream on Twitch.

1. Talent Cheat Sheets

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly
recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed
below work great for specific purposes.

"Zoo" Build — Best for Everything with T19 2pc or High Critical
Strike

This build strongly favours the T19 2-piece bonus, but it does not requires it to be better than Dire Frenzy. To know which build you should go for when raiding and doing Mythic+, we recommend simming your best combination of talents using the video tutorial found in the "Simulations" section of this guide.

It is called the Zoo Build due to One with the Pack combined with a high Critical Strike chance giving you a lot of Wild Call procs that reset the cooldown of your Dire Beast ability, letting you send a lot of beasts at your target.

Aspect of the Beast can be better than Killer Cobra when you have such low Mastery that Kill Commands are worth relatively little compared to Cobra Shots. There is no defined breakpoint for when this happens, but you should instead use the RaidBots.com website in conjunction with the SimPermut AddOn to simulate your talent combinations for your specific gearset.

3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents

Stomp causes your Dire Beast to do high AoE
damage when they are first summoned.

Dire Frenzy is an active ability that replaces
Dire Beast. It causes your pet to rapidly deal high Physical
damage over 5 attacks, and gives your pet a buff that increases its attack
speed by 30% for 8 seconds. This buff may stack up to 3 times.

Chimaera Shot is an active ability that deals high damage on
a 15-second cooldown which is reduced by Haste. It can hit up to 2 targets that
are close to each other, and it generates 10 Focus for each target hit.

Stomp is the strongest choice in most situations, unless you have high Mastery compared to Critical Strike and Haste. It provides a good single-target boost, especially with the Tier 19 2-piece set bonus, and also cleaves automatically. It is part of the most optimal builds for Beast Mastery and is thus the default choice. There is no exact cutoff point for "high" Mastery, and in almost all cases you are better off simulating the difference between the two builds for yourself.

Dire Frenzy is the best choice for all situations when you have extraordinarily high Mastery, combined with Bestial Fury and Killer Cobra, but while it has the theoretical maximum output, it is much more difficult to get the gear required than a Stomp-based build, so it is not recommended unless you are one of the lucky people with good gear, and very high Mastery. There is no exact cutoff point for "high" Mastery, and in almost all cases you are better off simulating the difference between the two builds for yourself.

Chimaera Shot is not desirable in any situation and should not be chosen as part of any optimal build.

4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents

Posthaste causes
Disengage
to free you from all movement-impairing effects and boost your movement speed
by 60% for 5 seconds.

Farstrider causes your damaging ability critical strikes to have a
15% chance to reset the cooldown of Disengage.

Trailblazer increases your non-mounted movement speed by 25% after
you have not attacked anything for 3 seconds. It expires when you attack
something again.

Your default choice should be Posthaste, as it will make you much
better at covering long distances on a regular basis. You can use
Farstrider if you never have to move more than the distance a single
Posthaste will take you. Trailblazer is only really worth
using for non-mounted periods where you will be moving between combat zones for
a long time. Since dungeons have nearly constant combat, and World Quests allow
you to mount up, there are not many places where you can reliably do this.
There is a conceivably use for it for Survival in dungeons, since the spec does
not have a lot of mobility when running between packs besides its
Harpoon ability.

One with the Pack gives you significantly
more Dire Frenzies and Beasts, which leads to pet attack speed uptime and Dire Frenzy
attacks in general. It is the best choice for most AoE for this reason. It is used in all situations where you would also use Stomp, meaning all builds that do not use Dire Frenzy. The talent benefits enormously from Critical Strike, and so does the Stomp-based "Zoo" build.

Blink Strikes is rarely used in a competitive raiding setting. While
it is very good for multi-target as it enhances pet damage significantly, which
translates into more Beast Cleave damage, it is very rare that AoE is the main
priority point of a fight. Additionally, Blink Strikes loses value compared to
Bestial Fury whenever the AoE is bursty in nature (which is nearly all the time in both raids and Mythic+). So while it performs very well in sims, it is generally not
worth picking in the Tomb of Sargeras or Mythic+ dungeons.

6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents

Tier 5 talents offer you a choice between 3 talents that provide you crowd
control and utility.

Binding Shot fires an arrow at a targeted location on the
ground. If an enemy comes within 5 yards of the arrow, and then steps more than
5 yards away from it again, they will be stunned for 5 seconds. This ability
has a 45-second cooldown.

Wyvern Sting puts the target to sleep for 30 seconds. The ability
has a 45-second cooldown. Any damage done to the target will break the
effect.

Intimidation commands your pet to stun the target for 3
seconds, with a 1-minute cooldown.

While none of these talents will have any effect on your DPS,
Binding Shot can bring some raid utility, as it can be used as a reliable
stun for fights with adds. It can also be used as an interrupt, since placing
it so that the add is at the edge of the targeted area will instantly stun it,
regardless of whether or not it moves.

You should choose the talent that best suits your situation, but
Binding Shot should generally be your default choice.

7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents

Tier 6 talents offer you a choice between 3 active abilities that increase your
DPS in different ways.

A Murder of Crows summons a flock of crows to
attack your target for 15 seconds, with a 1-minute cooldown. If the target dies
while under attack, the cooldown of A Murder of Crows is reset. It costs 30
Focus.

Barrage is a channeled spell that fires a barrage of shots at all targets in front of you, dealing moderate damage over 3 seconds (a total of 16 shots in quick
succession) to all of them. It
does not hit targets that are invisible or in stealth.

Volley is an activated ability that causes your auto shots to also
launch a volley of shots that deal moderate Physical damage to your target, and
all other targets within 8 yards. While Volley is active, it will drain 3 Focus per autoattack (about 1 Focus per second on average).

A Murder of Crows is currently the best talent
in this tier for 1-3 target situations. It does extremely high damage for a low
cost of Focus and time, because it benefits from Beast Mastery's Mastery, which
increases pet damage.

Since Barrage was nerfed significantly in 7.1.5 on single-target, it is now
only worth taking on heavy, spread out AoE. This essentially means that it will
fall short of Volley in nearly all realistic situations, because
Volley has much more powerful AoE in general. Barrage should only be taken if
all of the heavy AoE in an encounter is spread out further than Volley can
reach it.

For Ferocity, which is your preferred pet DPS spec, it causes
Kill Command to also deal low Physical damage to the target
over 6 seconds.

For Tenacity, it gives your pet a 30% damage taken reduction
for 6 seconds.

For Cunning, it reduces the target's movement speed by 50% for 4
seconds.

Killer Cobra is the best choice for pure single target applications in almost all situations.

Aspect of the Beast is only strong when you AoE so much that
Killer Cobra cannot be leveraged, which is mostly on sustained AoE
encounters of which there are essentially none in the Tomb of Sargeras. It is worth noting that in rare situations, it can be better than Killer Cobra for single-target when your Mastery is very low. This is because a low Mastery and high Critical Strike/Haste shifts your damage potential from Kill Command and over to Cobra Shot, making it more beneficial to minimize time spent casting Kill Command. The only way to know which is better for you is using RaidBots.com to simulate your character's talent setups, which is usually done in conjunction with the SimPermut AddOn. To figure out your best course of action in this and other talent tiers, we strongly recommend simming yourself using the video tutorial found in the simulations section of this guide.

Stampede is only useful for burst AoE. This is quite rarely useful,
because the single-target penalty you take for this burst AoE is generally
not worth it.

The choice between Killler Cobra and Stampede for
Mythic+ dungeons will depend on the exact dungeon. Killer Cobra prefers
dungeons with few heavy AoE segments where boss and single-target damage is
important, and Stampede the opposite.

9. Pet Talents

Pets do not have talent trees. Instead, you can simply choose one of three
specialisations for your pet (Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning). You can change
your pet's specialisation at any time (while out of combat), free of cost.

Each specialisation grants your pet a few specific abilities. Currently,
Ferocity provides the highest DPS in a raid environment, so it should be the
default choice for all specs.

10. ChangeLog

06 Sep. 2017: Removed the Mythic+ talents cheat sheet as it does not really differ from whatever your "Main" talents are (Dire Frenzy or Stomp builds), making it obsolete.

28 Aug. 2017: No changes needed for Patch 7.3.

08 Aug. 2017: Wrote some clarifications about having to simulate the different builds to know which is better.

05 Aug. 2017: Rewrote One with the Pack/Bestial Fury, and Stomp/Dire Frenzy sections.

20 Jul. 2017: Removed an obsolete section about Stampede.

18 Jul. 2017: Added a lot of notes about Aspect of the Beast and notes about Zoo build usage, and a lot of references to the importance of simming yourself for these character-specific choices.

13 Jul. 2017: Removed obsolete mentions of the Nighthold.

30 Jun. 2017: Dubbed the Stomp build the "Zoo" build.

22 Jun. 2017: Added note about using Stomp instead of Dire Frenzy when using the T19 2-piece.

17 Jun. 2017: Fixed some ambiguous wording and made it clear that the Stomp build is best with T19 2pc and not beyond.

14 Jun. 2017: Swapped a talent recommendation for the Stomp/OWTP build and fixed the graphic. Reworded the "title" of the OWTP build, and when to use it.

13 Jun. 2017: Changed some recommendations slightly for 7.2.5 changes and reworded the whole level 100 talent choice explanation. Put the Raid Encounters cheat sheet above the Mythic+ one. Reverted some One with the Pack wording that was based on a reverted change.